Kucinich asks for New Hampshire recount in the interest of election integrity

DETROIT, MI – Democratic Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, the most outspoken advocate in the Presidential field and in Congress for election integrity, paper-ballot elections, and campaign finance reform, has sent a letter to the New Hampshire Secretary of State asking for a recount of Tuesday’s election because of “unexplained disparities between hand-counted ballots and machine-counted ballots.”
...
He added, “Ever since the 2000 election – and even before – the American people have been losing faith in the belief that their votes were actually counted. This recount isn’t about who won 39% of 36% or even 1%. It’s about establishing whether 100% of the voters had 100% of their votes counted exactly the way they cast them.”

Kucinich, who drew about 1.4% of the New Hampshire Democratic primary vote, wrote, “This is not about my candidacy or any other individual candidacy. It is about the integrity of the election process.” No other Democratic candidate, he noted, has stepped forward to question or pursue the claims being made.

“New Hampshire is in the unique position to address – and, if so determined, rectify – these issues before they escalate into a massive, nationwide suspicion of the process by which Americans elect their President. Based on the controversies surrounding the Presidential elections in 2004 and 2000, New Hampshire is in a prime position to investigate possible irregularities and to issue findings for the benefit of the entire nation,” Kucinich wrote in his letter.

“Without an official recount, the voters of New Hampshire and the rest of the nation will never know whether there are flaws in our electoral system that need to be identified and addressed at this relatively early point in the Presidential nominating process,” said Kucinich

The BRAD BLOG has just spoken with a Kucinich press spokesperson who was not yet aware of the full scope of the hand count being called for. As more information becomes available, of course, we will share it.

Until then, a few thoughts on the announcement, a concern about recounts in New Hampshire from an Election Integrity advocate on the ground in the state, and one set of eyebrow-raising new numbers...

In the statement above, Kucinich says that he's calling for a "recount". While it may seem a quibble, the fact is that until now, 80% of New Hampshire's ballots have been "counted" only by a hackable, prone-to-error, Diebold optical-scan machine. The systems were entirely programmed, serviced and controlled by one somewhat less-than-reputable company (LHS Associates). The machines are the very same model shown being hacked in the Emmy-nominated HBO documentary Hacking Democracy, in which the results of a live mock election were flipped via the gaming of the machine's memory card.

Unedited footage of that live landmark hack from December of 2005, as well as rare footage of LHS Associate's President John Silvestro, can be seen here. And more deep background on LHS and their troubling, and exclusive control over New Hampshire's ballots is posted here.

We've put the words "count" and "recount" in quotes, given what we know about these machines, and given the fact that approximately 80% of the New Hampshire ballots have not actually been counted or examined by anyone. To our knowledge, only Diebold optical-scanners were used for tabulating those ballots, without any secondary cross-check or audit, to ensure accuracy. In other words, until now, 80% of New Hampshire results have been "faith-based". The other 20% or so of the ballots were counted by hand at the polling place on Election Night.

We would also caution Kucinich and his team to closely inspect the chain of custody for the ballots in question, and what has happened to them, and the vulnerable op-scan memory cards, since the election two days ago, during the period that concern has been widely expressed about the seemingly anomalous results of Tuesday's election. It's important that the chain of custody be both secure, fully logged, and transparent.

Nancy Tobi of New Hampshire for Democracy, a Granite State election integrity watchdog group, previously noted her concerns in earlier discussions about the possibility of hand counting the state's op-scan primary ballots.

"We have no control over the ballot chain of custody and we have learned the pain from the 2004 Nader recount, in which only 11 districts were counted, chosen by a highly questionable person, and then nothing showed up," she wrote recently. "Now all we hear is how the Nader recount validated the machines. A candidate asking for a recount may well be a tool used to 'prove" everything was okay and then that candidate will be further discredited," she warned.

Finally, Kucinich mentions one of the reasons for the count is the "unexplained disparities between hand-counted ballots and machine-counted ballots." Indeed, there are disparities between the hand-counted and Diebold counted ballots, as we reported last night. Hillary Clinton seems to have received a full 7 point advantage in Diebold precincts, versus hand-counted ones.

However, as mentioned last night, that disparity doesn't necessarily indicate anything in and of itself. There could be any number of reasons to explain it. For example, it's the smaller and more rural precincts who count by hand, where the larger towns use Diebold/LHS Associates to count. It could well be that Obama is more popular in smaller towns, and Clinton in larger.

We do note, however, the following rather remarkably anomalous result which was reported late this afternoon by analysts from the Election Defense Alliance (EDA). As noted by one of the researchers, IT Consultant Bruce O'Dell:

Analysts at the Election Defense Alliance (EDA) have confirmed that based on the official results on the New Hampshire Secretary of state web site, there is a remarkable relationship between Obama and Clinton votes, when you look at votes tabulated by op-scan v. votes tabulated by hand:

Clinton Optical scan 91,717 52.95%
Obama Optical scan 81,495 47.05%

Clinton Hand-counted 20,889 47.05%
Obama Hand-counted 23,509 52.95%

The percentages appear to be swapped. That seems highly unusual, to say the least.

O'Dell notes the group is "proceeding with intra and inter-county results and demographic analysis to better understand what this extremely unusual 'coincidence' may indicate."

You can find earlier BRAD BLOG coverage of concerns regarding the New Hampshire Primary election results --- and the speculation of the pundit and MSM world on why the pre-election polls must have been wrong, while entirely avoiding the question of whether the reported election results were actually validated --- indexed on this Special Coverage item here.

No doubt the morally spineless, and intellectually dishonest sycophants of the Democratic party, aided by the criminal media, will squirm out this one too. They'll do as Republicans do because they are either 1)corporate whores or 2)wimps.

Of course, Dennis Kucinich, being intellectually honest and clearly not a party-line eunuch, is shut out of debates by the fascist media (with nary a peep from the other candidates). Dennis Kucinich, a moral giant among his courage-deficient colleagues (as illustrated by their voting records)will likely witness his call for a recount being drowned out by the horrendous squawk of enraged Democratic eunochs.

Three criminal prosecutions in Ohio's biggest county have opened with strong indications that the cover-up of the theft of the 2004 presidential election is starting to unravel. Prosecutors say these cases involve "rigging" the recount in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), where tens of thousands of votes were shifted from John Kerry to George W. Bush, or else never counted. Meanwhile, corroborating evidence continues to surface throughout Ohio illuminating the GOP's theft of the presidency. According to the AP, County Prosecutor Kevin Baxter opened the Cuyahoga trial by charging that "the evidence will show that this recount was rigged, maybe not for political reasons, but rigged nonetheless." Baxter said the three election workers "did this so they could spend a day rather than weeks or months" on the recount.

Congratulations to Dennis. Let's prepare ourselves for an all-out assault from the media and Dem standard-bearers.

We are so lucky this "Hillary Cried for Me" nonsense happened in New Hampshire, where the hand-counting goes on in parallel to the Diebold/LHS mockery. Anywhere else and we wouldn't have a leg to stand on.

OMG this is refreshing (I love Dennis! especially after just peeking at the DickHeadinMI diary at kos.
(you know what they say about writers, make your readers mad enough and they'll write your column/blog for you)

Sooooo..if the recount comes back the same, and the undervotes stay the same....will you post it?...will you just shrug it off?...will give up this fear crusade?
I doubt it.
(Brother of Former SD ROV- and the current ones boss)

Hillary is either been set up as the nominee who can't win the presidential race or she's in on it. I personally think shes been made a fool of. Seen it happen to women in many top posistions. They are often put there for reasons not known to them, used and destroyed.
I think this is why Fox have been supporting her as the democratic candidate. They know once she goes for the presidential race she can't win because outside the democratic party gender and your policies on gender are a big issue.
Hillary, look at polls in both races (primary and presidential) to see if this is right. Make the manipulation of the primaries and the scullduggery public. Go to the UK or wherever to get the truth out. You can't win. Don't let them suck you in to loosing the presidency for the democrats.
Its either that or you have been corrupted and are in with them.

As with our reportage on your brother Mikel Haas, one of the country's worst registrars of voters (who never met a Diebold machine he didn't like), we report whatever we can, and whatever is newsworthy, and mostly, whatever we feel we can add something to.

I'm fairly certain we covered just about every beat when your brother defied the will of the voters, and arbitrarily and capriciously overpriced a request recount by a voter, in apparent attempt to keep anyone from noticing what happened on the Diebold machines that were used illegally in San Diego at the time your brother was in charge of undermining democracy there.

More on Mikel Haas, the brother of "OMSMedia" (Don Haas) is here, for those interested.

This issue of the NH primary and election fraud in general isnt about who "won" or who "lost" it is about the integrity of the system. A system without the highest integrity can not embue legitmacy on the victor. When verifiable questions arise as to the vericity of the either the methods imployed or the results produced, ANYONE interested in the legitimacy of the outcome must question the process. Failure to do so only casts those who are silent as those who care not for the legitamcy of the out come.
People who dismiss scientifically documented abnormalities and result to obfuscations and mis-directions are underminers of legitamcy.
As citizens we granted the right to the government to conduct elections in our interest and when we challenge the exercise of our right we are called "conspiratists?" Dare you to fight the Constitution, traitor! Dare you to deprive a citizen of his vote and dare you to call yourself an American!

"Candidates who lose by 3 percentage or less are entitled to a recount for a $2,000 fee. Candidates who lose by more must pay for the full cost. Kucinich's campaign said it was sending the $2,000 fee to start the recount." from yahoo news quoting Deputy Secretary of State David Scanlan who said Kucinich is entitled to a statewide recount but, under New Hampshire law, Kucinich will have to pay for it.

Howard, one of 42 so-called minor candidates in the primary, received 44 votes in the primary, according to the official tally. But at one point during the night’s vote counting, Howard said his tally was over 170 votes, making him wonder what happened.

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Howard, a chauffeur for Checker Sedan and father of eight, paid $1,000 to be on the New Hampshire ballot as a Republican presidential candidate. He is not on the ballot in any other states, most of which, like Michigan, require petitions signed by several thousand voters to get a candidate’s name on the ballot.

Okay that's it, I challenge this administration to rise up to a better standard.
NOW.
At this point... I feel glad we have at least two candidates to represent us in Kucinich and Paul!
Straight forward

So the so-called media experts "explanation" of the Hillary/Obama swing, is that RACIST New Hampshire WHITES were afraid to say they were voting for Hillary in the polls, and then in the privacy of the voting booth they voted for Hillary! So, New Hampshire citizens: Are you going to sit there and take it, when the media is portraying New Hampshire as a bunch of racists? If you're silent about it, then I guess you are!

I've been asking the same question during the last election when media predicted through exit polls that Kerry won. Then the result came out differently and they quickly dismiss it as inaccurate exit polls. Few months later, Ukraine exit polls differ from the election result and people revolted using that as ground that there was election fraud.

Exit polls have been used for quite a long time in U.S. and people, including Kerry was quick to accept that exit polls was wrong and media remain quiet afterwards. Hopefully someone will have the guts to really look into this rather than being afraid of opening a can of worms.

I can't believe it myself. The question now is at what point IF the integrity of the voting system was compromised did it occur and will a recount be able to catch it and most importantly, won't they delay it and delay it as long as possible?

As far as this other guy who's requesting it, the media will make a joke of him in a second --- he may be sincere, but he's better off not requesting it b/c as more fringe people come out for it, it will be a hey day for the media. Even Olbermann and so called "liberals" will probably join in.

So let's hope more than anything this leads to a discussion of the integrity and security of voting in this country --- something that I don't think most Americans think of and probably take for granted.

Obama doing better in the rural areas while Hillary "wins" in the bigger towns seems counter-intuitive. Given that all polling would indicate that Obama did well with Independent voters, it would seem likely that this would translate into even better results for him in more urbanized settings.

It might also be worth investigating the results in NH's college towns, where you would suspect that Obama would have done particularly well. If the Op-Scan "counts" from those districts don't have show him with a sizable margin then that would be the perfect place to begin the hand "re"counts.

Well, I can tell you this. I was watching CNN the entire night making written notes of the totals of several of the candidates as they were being updated, and at one point Kucinich had one amount and then in the next update, his total actually went down!!! How could that possibly be?

I have a sick feeling about this next presidential election. Kucinich is right. AFter 2000 and 2004, 2008 results will not be able to be trusted either. Maybe it really is the Bilderburg group that decides the presidency.

It might also be worth investigating the results in NH's college towns, where you would suspect that Obama would have done particularly well.

Were the college students in town or were they on holiday on primary day? If the kids were out of town that might skew the result you'd expect to see.

=====================

Big thanks to Dennis, but as others have cautioned, the audit/recount/1st count process must be fully scrutinized. It is very easy to rig the "recount" process to achieve the results you desire, especially if you know which precincts were altered (allegedly). Will the "recount" be a 100% full recount or a "random" sample recount. The random sample can be easily fixed to give you the precincts that were not altered. I'm not up on my NH election rules, so I don't know what percentage is recounted. I could look it up, but if anyone already has the link, please post.

While I hope there was no funny business, the worst thing that could happen would be to have a rigged recount that "proves" that everything was on the up-and-up if it actually was not.

The election integrity community is abuzz with news that candidate Dennis Kucinich will ask for a recount in New Hampshire, and Ron Paul fans have been pushing him to recount as well. Careful.

NEW HAMPSHIRE ELECTION INTEGRITY ADVOCATE NANCY TOBI IS CORRECT:

"We have no control over the ballot chain of custody and we have learned the pain from the 2004 Nader recount, in which only 11 districts were counted, chosen by a highly questionable person, and then nothing showed up. Now all we hear is how the Nader recount validated the machines."

As Tobi says, "A candidate asking for a recount may well be a tool used to 'prove' everything was okay and then that candidate will be further discredited."

I'll go further than that. The only way a recount makes any sense at all in New Hampshire is AFTER an assessment is made of the chain of custody issues. If the chain of custody isn't intact the recount won't be worth a cup of warm spit.

TOBI:

"This is high stakes.

"You do not walk into a battle ground not knowing where the snipers are, just because you were invited. Strategically, going into something like this where you have NO CONTROL is foolishness.

"And I say this as one of the strongest recount proponents of former times. Things I have come to learn and understand have changed my mind. The recount is someone else's game, not ours.

"In the recount, we have no control, and we have already lost 48 long hours of ballot chain of custody oversight.

"We need citizen control and oversight. This is not going to come from the recount. If the election was rigged...don't you think the riggers would have a backup Plan B for a rigged recount, knowing how easy it is to get a recount in NH?

No. It is time to take control. "

BLACK BOX VOTING:

The following is excerpted from our New Hampshire election protection information published in November 2007:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
quote:
Knowing that the greatest opportunities for election fraud are with insiders, this tells us something about what to examine first. If you are a person with inside access in New Hampshire, because any candidate can ask to recount any location, if you plan to manipulate the election you'll want to make sure you can achieve ballot substitution, ballot removal, or ballot stuffing. You need a strategy just in case someone asks for a hand count.

1) The name of all companies that print ballots for New Hampshire elections.

2) The ballot ordering history for each location, especially those using computerized voting systems and the inventory records for the current contest.

3) The ballot chain of custody plan for each location and for the state of New Hampshire.

IMMEDIATE CONCERNS

- We don't have information on ballot inventory records.

- With ballots and recounts, it's all about blocking ballot substitution. To achieve substitution, you need extra ballots. If you get more ballots, someone might follow the money trail and ask you why you're sitting on 10,000 or so blank ballots. So you need some workarounds.

BALLOT CHAIN OF CUSTODY WAR STORIES

Patriot Richard Hayes Phillips, while writing his brilliant upcoming book "Witness to a Crime," uncovered evidence that an Ohio County took delivery on 10,000 off-the-books ballots in 2004.

Employees for the Diebold ballot printing plant slipped us financials showing that Diebold was printing 25% more ballots than ordered. This could be handy: If a governmental entity doesn't take official delivery on ballots, Plan B can sit at a print house somewhere, on private property and absent from either government bookkeeping or public records.

CONVICTED FELONS

The Diebold ballot printing plant at the time we got records on the overages, was being run by a convicted felon who had spent four years in prison on a narcotics trafficking charge. No, not New Hampshire's voting machine programming exec Ken Hajjar, who cut a plea deal in 1990 for his role in cocaine distribution. This was another convicted felon, John Elder, who ran the Diebold ballot printing plant; he's now an elections consultant.

We have so far been unable to learn whether New Hampshire has convicted felons printing their ballots; we've got a records request in on this. New Hampshire officials like to say "The state prints the ballots" but they sure aren't printed in Secretary of State Bill Gardner's office.

Frank S., one of the new breed of citizens jumping in to take back control of our elections, took the initiative on his own to help today by spending several hours trying to find the ballot printer in NH. It may be that convicted felons print the ballots: Frank turned up evidence that one state-paid printing vendor is NHCI - New Hampshire Correctional Industries, a prison-based printing outfit.

New Hampshire Correctional Industries is a job training program for inmates. After they get out of prison they have a skill! I'm not sure we want a bunch of ex-convicts running around in New Hampshire with ballot printing expertise, so I hope a different ballot printing vendor will show up.

Any candidate seeking a recount needs to know this stuff.

IDENTIFY NARROW SPOTS IN THE PIPELINE

What is the smallest number of people with access, and at what points does centralization of access occur?

WHERE HAVE THE BALLOTS BEEN DURING THE LAST 48 HOURS

If there's going to be a recount of this magnitude, we need to know whether checks and balances have been followed. Let me give you an example of what I mean: In San Mateo County, California, citizen Brent Turner asked for ballot chain of custody records for 2007; a six-week gap in the access logs was revealed in the documents.

SHOULD CANDIDATES RECOUNT NEW HAMPSHIRE?

In concept I love the idea, but as it currently stands, it makes me queasy. They're walking into this blind about the details that make or break the integrity of the process.

WHAT TO DO INSTEAD

Tobi calls for doing a real investigation in order to take corrective action by November. I'm not sure about that. New Hampshire had hearings on the hackable Diebold optical scan machines, and didn't take any action to mitigate the risks.

New Hampshire knew it was running elections on machines that can't be trusted. And today, thanks to the efforts of two more citizen volunteers, I learned that the New Hampshire Secretary of State knew about the narcotics trafficking conviction of Ken Hajjar, yet still authorized LHS to code every memory card in New Hampshire.

Harri Hursti himself testified in New Hampshire in Sept. 2007, urging them to disconnect the wiring allowing reprogramming of the memory card through the modem port. New Hampshire took no action.

New Hampshire didn't take even the half-step actions other states used to beef up voting machine security.

Maybe there are better ways to skin this cat.

THE IDEA OF A RECOUNT STILL INTRIGUES ME BUT...

At this moment I can't think of a way to offset the chain of custody unknowns. The last thing we want is a recount that doesn't answer our questions, or raises new suspicions that aren't answered.

Then, indeed, why bother with ballots? If they're no good to us after the hackable machine counts, why are we here? If Dennis can't handle this correctly, why is he here? If there is no way to insure election integrity in too many places, why are we still blathering about being a democracy? If it is already this bad, why aren't we in the middle of the Second American Revolution?

The situation in New Hampshire is troublesome. Equally awful is the mesmerizing effect of having the M$M call the election results even though 67% or less of the final votes are in.

Maybe it doesn't matter in the Primaries, or so I have been told. Supposedly those in charge of the Primary can "undo" it if the Networks announce a candidate as a winner and it later turns out they weren't.

But it sets us up for accepting that the Media should call the shots on election night. And once ABC or MSNBC or whoever calls the winner, and it is acknowledged by the Powers that Be, we will perhaps be right where we were on Nov 3rd 2004 when Andrew Card announcing that Bush was the winner of the election.

Are we all ready for stolen election # 3?

We need to have ech candidate's guarantee that they will neither accept a victory or make a concession until all the votes are in. And until they are really counted, not simply offered up to the networks for "projections."

As Bev points out, many pitfalls here and it could end up a disaster, further "validating" machines and furnishing more hype about why they should be trusted and hand counts aren't needed. WHO is on the ground covering all of the danger points that Bev raises? Has anyone done anything to preserve the ballots at this point and ensure that there is SOME form of VALID chain-of-custody tracking and protection of not only the ballots but also the cards?

Oh, I was still laughing about your earlier old biddies running to the polls to vote for Hillary comment yesterday 99, and how I could have made a fortune selling Depends to them standing in line...there was so many of them you know

Heh. I'm freakin' about the contortionist explanations for this gig. Blows my mind how crazy people will get to explain away something so suspicious as to be almost positively fraud. Mainstream America is running around with its fingers in its ears, yelling, "No, no, noooooo! We don't have election fraud! That's third world shit! The racist old ladies stormed the polls at the last minute, and if you suspect otherwise yer a conspiracy theorist!"

Tell you what i make of it. Prior to the 2004 rigged recount of Ohio ordered by Green party candidate David Cobb and the Independent Party candidate, a PHD political science expert at Ohio Free Press studied the exit poll data and claimed that the possibility of Bush beating Kerry by the tallied results at a million to one.

Bush/Cheney of course did not win but the damage these treasonous murderous criminals have done to this country and our world is still increasing. I fully believe that this rigged election system is a biproduct of staying the course with the bush/cheney government of despicable terrorists.

Give props where earned.

The fact of the matter remains:

1. In U.S. elections, votes are allowed to be counted in secrecy by private computer companies. Even worse, these companies have known ties to the people who stole the election in 2004. 2006 numbers didn't match but was unquestioned by the Democrats who became the majority in Congress. Didn't matter because a corporate 1%er is a still a fascist sellout. Right Flipper Joe Lieberman?

THIS PROBLEM HAS NOT BEEN CORRECTED THUS AS BRAD STATED 80% OF THE VOTES IN NH WERE COUNTED BY dIEBOLD IN SECRECY.

2. Computer voting machines can eliminate or alter votes, flipping votes when 1st cast or changed by remote at any point up to and including at final tabulation. Best of all in some instances the program eats itself never to be discovered.

3. To fully understand the theft of 2004, that actually happened in the 4 swing states of OH,NV,NM, and FL, you have to understand that massive humanistic fraud happened. Please refer to John Conyers 104 page paper on the theft in Ohio for examples of the disinfranchisment thanks to star performer Ohio Secretary of State kenneth Blackwell. No conflict of interest and NO time served for his efforts as co-chair of the bush/cheney re-election campaign.

4th problem deserving honorable mention posted by Fred W at commment #9 is just around the bend if a voter ID becomes a requirement per the Bush appointed majority in Supreme Court. This state computerized left turn that exists in 41 states can stop the validation of a citizen's ID under the excuse of an untimely server coincidently going down.

This is bush/cheney government at it's finest hour occupying a country near you to impose this U.S. form of Democracy as pre-empted by the commander in chief. And that's dictator to you pal if he declares a national emergency since May 2007.

2008: Impeach the treasonous lier dick cheney and immediately start prosecution of the bush administration in a world court for high crimes and misdemeanors.

Investigate former secret agent Sibel Edmonds gagged by bush whose claim in the British Times this weekend that 25 high level US government criminals were directly involved in selling nuclear secrets to Pakistan and some have direct involvement in 9/11.

Dennis Kusinich: Please let us know Sir that you are aware of these new findings in the Edmonds case and your course of action.

It's just like these corrupt oath breakers to go through all this trouble and fuck-up the chain of custody.

Here we are bitching about the fucking electronic vote tabulation devices and there they are fucking up the chain of custody of the actual evidence itself. The paper ballots

What the fuck do we fucking need a fucking ARMED ZORRO to protect the vote!?

So abort this re-count?
Is that the message here?
Screw the constitution?
Screw the people because we've been tricked again by these pieces of crap. Their "perceived diligence" but utter fucking corrupt ass negligence?

If these motherfucking SOS's can't handle chain of custody, throw their fucking ass in jail.
THEY ARE DOMESTIC TERRORISTS

Oh that's right dawgz, can't do that. Due process and all that fucking crap.

I have message for Secretary of States who are inside of the United States of America and all of it's Territories and everywhere fucking else we have an interest.

If you don't allow us to vote, and we can't validate our vote, then you and everything you say is now officially nullified.

And yeah sure you can sick the police after us saying some bullshit unconstitutional crap, but you have NOW SHOWN your true colors, you haven't thought this shit through, and you haven't a backup plan. You can say whatever fucking crap you want, you are nullified by "We The People" you and the fake ass people you put in power are the enemy of state. Once folks finally wake up to this fact it is going to be a fucking bloodbath.

We now know who the TRUE DOMESTIC TERRORISTS ARE. and it ain't "We The People." It's the officials counting the vote. And if it aint the shitty fucking electronics it's the shitty leadershits and their crap ass chain of custody. (Didn't we just get a giant fucking ear full of bullshit from a bunch of ROV's saying policies and procedures policies and procedures? Oh you fuckers really are too much now. We've all just fucking had enough of your crap. What do you want from us? Silence? Violence? Let us all know.)

I had it with all your unconstitutional shit. Your all fucking miserable failures as leaders.

A BIG thanks to the few people that actually care about this stuff.

There's a lot of folks laughing out there.
I want to remind them that this ain't funny, it ain't cool, it pisses people off, and it will come to a head one way or another.

Phil, I don't think Dennis will fail. For however goofy he comes off sometimes, he is incredibly smart and I've seen him get serious as a heart attack. He is NO wuss. He absolutely can handle this, if anyone can, and it's completely crazy not to take it to the mat every time there is THIS much suspicious stuff attached... no matter what the criminals try to make of it, and no matter how many steps ahead they might be.

Yep 99 I am behind him too right now. Actually I am behind anyone that will uphold the Constitution as I remember it as I was taught in school. Not the new modified crap that happened in the last 7 years. That shit is nullified as far as I am concerned. If I ever have to do jury duty for someone and I see this unconstitutional crap on them I will not only nullify it I will send a message back.

All these fucking pacifist yuppies are full of shit. Perhaps if they were required to SERVE this country they would have a lot more respect for the constitution . I am cussing a lot and that does bother me, but I don't know what else to do to get this word out .

It's now or never.

IF it's never, then I want to know, I wanna know where I can go to get away from these domestic terrorists. I want out of this country where they have no say, where the wind from their fucking nukes won't cross my path.

I say this as a veteran. I am not stupid, if my country turns into a fucking war zone, I will use my two feet and get as far away as I can. If I am in the military I will die going against the brick wall.

I am tired of this chicken shit crap that passes off for elections and the "media pass" that is granted on it. No I ain't forgot about the Sibel case too, there's so much crap in play right now, that I almost expect the oath breakers to attack us right now to bury all this shit.

These fucking people (if allowed to continue down this same old bullshit path) are going to wipe the face of the earth clean with radiation.

Those numbers look correct to me BECAUSE Hillary won the LARGEST and most densely populated areas of New Hampshire because those were MODERATE Democrats.

Obama won the college towns and basically the SAME AREAS HOWARD DEAN WON BEFORE!

Look it up. Plus the % points of the victory was less than 3% which means it is a virtual tie. Both got 9 delegates.

The woman didn't expect to win and had not written a victory speech. Move on and stop slamming Dems. Either Hillary or Obama will be the Dem nominee so stop cutting each other at the knees for the Republicans.

To cut to the chase. If the frigin diebold criminals are the ones that have had sole control and or unsecured storage of the original physical evidence or ballots totally 80% of the total New Hampshire vote, how hard could it be to fix a recount?

Think about it for 1 second. If you were a treasonous pirate in the business of fixing elections with virtually an unlimited budget, wouldn't it make sense that you would have evolved a plan B after the rigged recount of Ohio? While the election advocates have voiced their evidence of fraud the US election system has remain unchanged an UN-uniform across the 50 states.

So the answer is YES. The corporate 1%er that the corporate 1%ers want after occupying the office without winning the popular vote in the last 2 election in all likelyhood has a backup plan in 2008 to continue the changes they have made in 7 yrs of bushit and increased Executive powers.

My final word tonight: Fck this bullshit and reject this system of elections regardless of what results are discovered.

Listen, ROTTEN, it may not matter to you whether the nominee is the one chosen by the voters, but it matters to most of the rest of us. When do you suppose AMERICANS stop getting cut off at the knees by criminals? Surely never if we listen to you.

Have advocates who question the wisdom of a recount, though based on experienced thought there might be a different purpose that exposing explicit examples of fraud?

Should one honestly think a man of Mr Kucinich's intellegence, advised by similiar people are not aware of what they are up against? That this decision was made in a vacum of knowledge - unaware of the tactics and operators involved?

All the honest and hard earned efforts have done much to lay the ground work for a public debate -one that has been vacant from the political landscape. Maybe Mr Kucinich's action is designed to shed light on a process shrouded in secrecy, operated by convict felons, rife with vulnriblities. The buzz is in the air on a subject that stikes to the heart of what is means to be a representative democracy.

To miss an opportunity to confront the system at an early stage is important. Lets see what the back-up plan is, lets see how they plan to cover their tracks. Let see who steps up or sink into the shadows. Exposure of atleast some of the plan now gives transparency advocates advanced warning on what to expect and possible responses. Start forcing the hand now instead of being blind-sided later on. Stop being one step behind and start to plan to be one step ahead.

60,000 caged voters - too late to do anything about in Fla...Provisional ballot objections en mass - too late to do anything about it. 3,000,000 "soil ballots" - too late to do anything about. 7 years of fighting modern election fraud and vulnerabilties after the fact has done NOTHING to prevent the exact same system to continue to operate.

Maybe moving on the offensive might work maybe it wont, but the process of taking it to sham artists before they can sham must be done.

Of course I know the deck is stacked. Of couse I know there are back-up plans. But shouldn't advocates of transparent government want to expose the traps now and expose the strategies in advance rather than when it is too late?

I agrue that what Mr Kucinich stated in his release is exactly what he expects. If there is veracity in the election process, let those who profess it be forced to show it. If there is fraud in the system, let those wrong doers cover it up.

We know the probable outcome of the recount. What we dont know if fraud is present. And if
there is - what methods will be (not might) used to cover it up. If not to force their hand now? When?

Agnst in the general populous is deep, be it high gas prices, no medical care, shrinking middle-class or lives lost in foreign wars. What treatens this country's existence is when the populous no long feels that their voice will atleast be heard. The detactment between government and the governed has always led to civil strife and suffering.

My final note:
My father has recently started to relate a story to me about FDR and the 1930s. He was born in 33 and lived as a poor child though the heart of it. While the world bubbled in turmoil, some moved to Fasism as the answer and others to Communism. Protests on the streets in America were growning, the trust in government was eroding rapidly. Food riots, chained out unemployed workers, Hoover-blankets and Hoover-villes. Hope was evaporating.
FDR a man of considerable means and one of priveldge and position was elected President. Something had to be done, but what? What motivated FDR to start working for "socialist programs"? Here is what my father says: FDR said, "He did not want to be the last President of the United States."

Do we want to be the last citizens of an honestly elected democratic republic?

Thanks 99. Sometimes i get so wrapped up with this stuff that i'm sort of like Belucci in Animal House when when he's giving the fiery speech to his frat house and references something like when the Germans attacked Pearl Harbor.

I am just so sick of what these bastard have done to our country, i need to help stop them at all costs.

Well, right here we have a lot of really good examples of why we can't be keeping our powder dry on the chance that the bad guys would have disappeared votes or padded ballot boxes. We've got a huge population of people who are ready to fight or die or move or get hauled off to the bin or drink themselves to death over the loss of our Constitution. We've got others who don't care what or how as long as we can have any Democrat presiding over our "soft fascism".

MrBill123 wrote: "60,000 caged voters - too late to do anything about in Fla...Provisional ballot objections en mass - too late to do anything about it. 3,000,000 "soil ballots" - too late to do anything about."

Voter ID law too late to do anything about.

Looks like the fascist-stacked Supreme Court of the United States will uphold it. US democracy is a farce. Without it, the United States Gov't has no moral authority around the world, and certainly not domestically. No wonder countries around the world are dumping the American dollar, basically writing US off...

... so a "few" dkosians actually approve of talking about such... maybe as much as 6 or 7, yathink?

To avoid bursting blood vessels while reading the comments on the diary just note and ignore the prolific ignorance and occasions of outright wankery... and instead reflect on the dozens and dozens of sensible replies to the foolishness.

Some fucking Corporate Vaporware statistics posted on some biased URL?
Or maybe look up the (oop's I dropped the ball again) Broken chain of custody statistics?

Right now from my understanding that if the CHAIN OF CUSTODY for the PAPER BALLOTS or the ELECTRONIC RESULTS are broken.. Either OR Either one.

Then no outcome can be validated.

The only electronic outcome can be validated is if it compares to a 100% match of a paper outcome. If one single ballot is wrong, then the electronic vote tabulation device failed.

The only paper ballot recount outcome can be validated if a 100% proper chain of custody was followed. (let me explain this... Imagine your on a jet aircraft working in the USAF, and you remove a black box to get to your own shit to fix a problem, well you have to write in the forms you removed that fucking box to get to your shit e.g. F.O.M. Maintenance, meanwhile..... your about 1/2 mile from anywhere you could turn that classified box into a vault to be secured, so HOW DO YOU GET THERE BY YOURSELF????? hmmmm? And no you don't have a phone or radio.. I'll tell you how you do it, you pick the fucking box up and carry it by hand for 50 yards and set it down, then go get another and another and another until you make it back with nothing interfering with your shit or the physical obstruction of the view of your shit during the whole ordeal. If something interferes with your shit your welcome to KILL it. and then make a report that the dead thing in the path was fucking with my classified boxes. But now we have a new problem, you filled out paperwork and put (cough signed) the shit into a vault, but now it's missing. That's called a broken chain of custody.)

YET the fucking corporate mainstream media has finished with this and published their results and declared winners and is moving on to SC.

Nobody is slamming democrats or republicans. (sic) I say that likely just your opinion.

I know that I ain't allowed to personally attack you, but if I could, I would.

Just think out loud here, but I don't think the Clintons were behind this.

I think you guys have left some other important data out that needs more preliminary research done. Hillary and Obama's votes weren't the only ones affected. Ron Paul's vote tally was apparently cut approximately in half too. Nobody in the Clinton camp gives a rat's derrière what Ron Paul's number were, but the right wingers most certainly do. That actually puts Ron Paul in 3rd ahead of Huckabee. I don't think I'm overstating how many GOP apple carts get overturned if anti-war libertarian Ron Paul finishes in 3rd in the New Hampshire Primary ahead of a Baptist Preacher and the mayor of 9/11.

Anyone here have a problem visualizing in their head some Focus on the Family Dobson subordinates on the ground in NH losing their mind and pushing panic buttons all over the country when their internal polls showed Huckabee behind Paul? And since Jesus already got the voting machines open for them already... might as well make sure that "Damascus Candidate" Hussein Obama isn't going to be lopping the heads of Christians with scimitars. Praise Jesus.

I am embolden by the responses posted here - the spirit that I was taught that ran deep in Americans is still strong.

27 years of increasing repressive government and 7 years of accelerated dismantling of the Constitution has not gone un-noticed. There is indeed a unity of opinion expressed here that represents the same spirit that fought against the tyranny of George III. Until recently, the US had the best educational system. I can see the results. The priciples of freedom and justice expoused by the Constitution and Bill of Rights has not yet been squashed.
There is indeed hope when men and women of all backgrounds, status and position still carry the same fire that forced out the imperial British in 1776, forged a revolutionary compact between the government and the governed in 1787, who shed countless lives of bother and kin to preserve the Union in 1865 who fought on foreign shores to free men, woman and children enslaved and slaughted by the darkest forces yet seen on this earth in 1945.

I for one will continue to defend this Constitution and demand that legitmacy of any government elected be shown without any reasonable doubt. I stand with other writers before me in unison. There will be no further compromise as to the integrity of our election system.
The battle in 2008 is more than policy - it is about legitmacy. Does America still have what it takes to ensure it has a legitmate government.
The names and faces in the government is less important than knowing that they were legitimately placed there.

Guys, of course Hillary Clinton was not behind it. She is obviously and consciously in front of this.

She was instrumental in making sure there was no recount in 2000 and in 2004. Her doing this guaranteed her inexplicable rise to power in 2008. The way she/bush/pelosi/cheney see it is the following:

It is her turn to get appointed by a fixed system of appointing dictators.

Also look at all her lovely little puppets (gergen, carville, etc.) making up every excuse in the world about how all the polls from Timbuktu to Siberia were all wrong. I mean these guys are spreading outlandish conspiracy theories that give aid and comfort to the enemy.

Will you Clintonian Conspiracy Theorists (CCT) stop spreading this viscious hate against the victims in this catastrophic and catalyzing event?

This catastophic and catalyzing event of elitest presidential voter fraud will cause a strategic transformation within the American people. This transformation acts as a "New Pearl Harbor" to force them to work together and restore the constitution.

I guess Hillary pulling the trigger and defrauding the American people prematurely has in a way assisted the American people in bringing about this change rapidly rather than it being a slow gradual process.

So in a way, her greed and hubris has added velocity toward restoring the constitution. That should be taken into account during her obvious future sentencing.

nope, medication unchanged for the moment and is all vascular and/or diabetes related.

But a recent diagnosis of sleep apnea related to my failing heart explained what I had feared was increasing dementia... and learning that I'm just perpetually exhausted instead of losing my mind has done wonders for my mood

“Analysts at the Election Defense Alliance (EDA) have confirmed that based on the official results on the New Hampshire Secretary of state web site, there is a remarkable relationship between Obama and Clinton votes, when you look at votes tabulated by op-scan v. votes tabulated by hand:

Clinton Optical scan 91,717 52.95%
Obama Optical scan 81,495 47.05%

Clinton Hand-counted 20,889 47.05%
Obama Hand-counted 23,509 52.95%

The percentages appear to be swapped. That seems highly unusual, to say the least.”

No big surprise to me.

It sure would be easy to program a 100% vote swap!

It sure looks like every machine “counted” vote for Clinton could have went to Obama and every machine “counted” vote for Obama could have went to Clinton.

I’m not sure such a switch has not been done before.

In the Ohio 2005 referendum the first two options on the list were expected to have about 2/3 of the votes going in one direction. Almost the exact percentages came up in the results except no votes had the strength that was expected for yes votes and yes votes had the percentage expected for no votes.

The expected results were taken from a conservative newspaper that up until that time had and almost perfect record of predicting results.

The rest of the issues in that election also had unexpected results but were close enough that a switch would not have been a sure bet. The results for most if not all of those came out unexpectedly but did not appear to be the result of a 100% vote swap.

The conservative position was the big winner as it always seems to be whenever these “counting” machines appear to have a “glitch”.

How do we the people get them to recount, or can it only be from a candidate. Why isn't CNN, MSNBC reporting about Dennis Kucinich...something seems fishy, like the media is trying to keep it under wraps. I only found out about Dennis through the net. Finally foxnews has an article about it on their site, however they are monitoring comments. Not only do I demand a recount for all the candidates, but screw those machines that have been proved you can hack it. Whatever happened to good old fashioned paper ballots...that is counted by trusted officials.

Focus on Rove and his desire to forever "Swiftboat" the reliability of Exit Polls.

THAT is the entire game being played.

Unless and until they can eliminate the practice of Exit Polling in the United States, it will always be obvious when they steal an election.

No Exit Polls - No Evidence of fraud.

Dick Morris, a career pollster (who has worked for both parties), states in the Hill News that the Election Night pattern of exit polls versus popular vote in six battleground states - Florida, Ohio, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada and Iowa - was "virtually inconceivable":

"Exit polls are almost never wrong ... So reliable are the surveys that actually tap voters as they leave the polling places that they are used as guides to the relative honesty of elections in Third World countries. … To screw up one exit poll is unheard of. To miss six of them is incredible."

If you are going to STEAL AN ELECTION VIA VOTE RIGGING – you need to lay the ground work – planting doubt in the minds of the electorate through the media shills.

Exit polling has been a reliable method by which to approximate the result of elections prior to the final votes being tallied. Exit polling has only been called into question in the last two election cycles – but ONLY because the Exit Polling data were not confirmed by the final “official” vote tally. As has now been proven, it was not the Exit Polling data that was inaccurate or unreliable, it was the reporting of the Official Total” that had been tampered with.

It’s time to TAKE THE OFFENSIVE where Exit Polling is concerned and reveal this Swiftboating of “Exit Polling” for what it is – a Rovian sham designed specifically to condition the electorate to disbelieve the exit poll results (which will portray the house and Senate going under Democratic Control), and rather to only believe the “Official” (FALSE) vote count.

The Mainstream Media is fully complicit in the Rovian Brainwashing campaign to discredit “Exit Polling” as unscientific hoohah, when in fact it is the smoking gun EVIDENCE of election fraud used throughout the world. Ask International Elections Observers about the value of Exit Polling.

FOCUS ON THE REAL GAME - and the reasons behind it. This is all in preparation for the main event.

As the 1983 American Heritage Dictionary noted, fascism is: "A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism." (The US dictionary definition has gotten somewhat squishier since then, as all the larger dictionary companies have been bought up by multinational corporations.)

Mussolini was quite straightforward about all this. In a 1923 pamphlet titled "The Doctrine of Fascism" he wrote, "If classical liberalism spells individualism, Fascism spells government." But not a government of, by, and for We The People - instead, it would be a government of, by, and for the most powerful corporate interests in the nation.

It seems that facism more resembles bush policy that islamic theocracy...
Here is the 14-point Britt definition as posted some months ago...

Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5. Rampant Sexism - The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.

6. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes, media is directly controlled by the government. But in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

7. Obsession with National Security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined - Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

9. Corporate Power is Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

10. Labor Power is Suppressed - Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

14. Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

I will not vote for Hillary or Obama in the primary, however, a call for a recount is about real elections, not play pretend drama by sicko pols. John Stewart illustrated that fiasco appropriately.

The entity or realm that is in the greatest danger in preznit blush's empire of incompetence is fact, accuracy, and truth. These are supressed over and over again. That empire is Amurka, and it is a blood sucking parasite.

We have to swim upstream to get anything resembling election sanity done these daze.

it's dejavu all over again.
To Phil: I'm right there with you, bro.I have that sinking sickening feeling again just i did in 04 when i leanred within 24 hours of the results that the polls reflected Kerry won and yet after 8pm that tuesday, Bush numbers started climbing inexplicably. I will never forget that night/morning when i relaized we do not have democracy here.

To TruthIsAll: where the hell have you ben??!! It was your data over at democraticunderground that i read obsessively for days weeks months after 04. Are you on top of this? So glad you're still around, and i pray and hope you are in good spirits and health.

to Brad: im a TU over at Kos and the minute i posted about suspect polls and ballots, i was hammered and threatened to be thrown off the site. Luckily Booman gets it as do other genuine progressive blogs.

so here i am in 2008 with that sick feeling of powerlessness, that not enough people understand the complexities of how their votes end up meaning nothing, that this is just a horse and pony show, that the next POTUS has already been decided for us --Guliani will beat Hillary by 1 or 2 states --- and that the organized criminals win again. Does anyone honestly believe that the GOP is going to hand the keys of power to anyone but their own? Guiani is their own, complicit in their crimes and the ongoing FALSE REALITY that we continually find oursleves living in will never end until everyone in this country knows what we know.

It was during a press conference on Sept. 16, 2001, in response to a question about homeland security efforts infringing on civil rights, that Bush first used the telltale word ''crusade'' in public. ''This is a new kind of --- a new kind of evil,'' he said. ''And we understand. And the American people are beginning to understand. This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while.''

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend --- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality --- judiciously, as you will --- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

Who besides guys like me are part of the reality-based community? Many of the other elected officials in Washington, it would seem. A group of Democratic and Republican members of Congress were called in to discuss Iraq sometime before the October 2002 vote authorizing Bush to move forward. A Republican senator recently told Time Magazine that the president walked in and said: ''Look, I want your vote. I'm not going to debate it with you.'' When one of the senators began to ask a question, Bush snapped, ''Look, I'm not going to debate it with you.''

For the benefit of knee-jerk 'smart fellows' whose minds are befogged by 'slides' and who will be inclined to accuse the Editor of International Currency Review of being a 'conspiracy theorist', the following statement by one of the leading globalist strategists, Mr David Rockefeller, published in 2002*, will no doubt come as a shock:

'For more than a century ideological extremists [sic] at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicised incidents such as my encounter with Castro, to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and over economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as "internationalists" and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure ? one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it'.

As will be seen, David Rockefeller acknowledges that he is part of a secret cabal (synarchy) which works against the best interests of the United States. Why has he not yet been indicted, then, for conspiring against the United States under Section 371 of the United States Code, Title 18, 'Crimes and Criminal Procedure', which states that 'if two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both'?

Cheney sent Ledeen to meet with Ambassador Mel Sembler in Italy to plant the forged Niger document.

COINCIDENTALLY…
Mel sembler heads up Scooter Libby’s Legal defense fund
AND
Despite the fact he’s a lifelong Republican, Sembler held a fundraiser for Lieberman in Palm Beach - in coordination with Rove and the WH.

Connect ALL the dots…
Lieberman is now assigned the task of protecting Chertoff.

How does McCain factor in?

A New Jersey-based investment banker deeply involved in fund-raising efforts for the 2004 Republican convention, Lewis Eisenberg, is signing on with Mr. McCain. Mr. Eisenberg is a former Goldman Sachs partner who served as chairman of the Port Authority board at the time of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

WHAT A COINCIDENCE!

It was Eisenberg who passed the $15 billion Asbestos Liability represented by the Twin Towers onto Larry Silverstein, the man who confessed publicly to having Building 7 “PULLED” by explosives – despite the fact that no plane struck it:

Pull the entire thread and don’t stop pulling.
The Asbestos liability belonged to Halliburton, having acquired it along with his acquisition of Dresser.

GW included the issue in his State of the Union speech in 2005:

“To make our economy stronger and more competitive, America must reward, not punish, the efforts and dreams of entrepreneurs. Small business is the path of advancement, especially for women and minorities, so we must free small businesses from needless regulation and protect honest job-creators from junk lawsuits. (Applause.) Justice is distorted, and our economy is held back by irresponsible class-actions and frivolous asbestos claims — and I urge Congress to pass legal reforms this year.”

"... Proponents and apologists of the privatized and computerized corporate elections often justify computerized elections saying how “easy” it is to corrupt a hand count election. They say, “But you can always swap out the ballots to get the count you want!”

And they are 100% correct about this. But only when there is no citizen oversight. And the only time this happens in a hand count election is in a recount.

In the Election Night count, the first count, the count that matters, all hand count elections have complete citizen oversight as a check against the kind of corrupt outcome you would find in a ballot swapping affair. But in a recount, there is absolutely no citizen oversight for the entire time between Election Night and the recount itself.

If we are going to assume the possibility that some nefarious super spy has bothered to rig a New Hampshire election, wouldn’t we assume they have also taken into account our liberal recount laws? Wouldn’t we assume they might have a Plan B to ensure a recount validates their nefarious doings? Is it at all logical that evildoers who find their way into our machine counts might not also find a way into our recounts?

Open and honest elections require citizen oversight. This is a simple thing to accomplish in a hand count Election Night count. But in a recount it is impossible.

In a recount, citizens have no control over the ballot chain of custody. Unless citizens have stood guard over every ballot box from the moment that it was sealed and signed by our local election officials, the recount provides no more assurance than the machine counts. A recount of a secret computerized vote count is just another weak link in the chain of publicly observable ballot custody required for honest and open elections.

In 2004, on request from citizen activists, candidate Ralph Nader had a New Hampshire recount. Only 11 districts, chosen by a mysterious out of state activist, claiming to be a statistician who had found anomalies in the results, were recounted. New Hampshire officials at the time disagreed with her interpretation but the recount occurred as she directed. To nobody’s surprise, the recounts uncovered no significant discrepancies, and New Hampshire’s system of corporate controlled secret vote counting got a big stamp of approval.

And here we are again. Another corporate controlled New Hampshire election. Another questionable outcome. Did the Nader recount change things for the better? Did it resolve the problem?

If New Hampshire conducts a recount now, it’s as reasonable as not to assume this recount will again not reveal any significant discrepancies. Our corporate controlled secret vote count elections will be validated, and we will continue to have elections whose outcomes can not be trusted. ..."

plunger . . i had referenced the susking article a few days ago for a post at DK . . i will never forget those quotes regarding "we act and you study what we do" theme.right now they are acting and the media is spinning and the people are believing. but i'm not.

To me this implies that the entire vote counting was/is a sham --- the vote numbers appear to have been totally fabricated (a figment of somebodies very creative mind!)

Couple this with the Ron Paul "Sutton" affair. There, 31 votes for Ron Paul appeared from nowhere. Let me elaborate suppose a 1000 votes were cast in Sutton So the totals reported would have been 1000 votes with Ron Paul getting 0 votes. Now that his votes were corrected to 31 votes --- did the total vote count sum to 1000 or 1031 --- where did these 31 votes come from?

The implication of my previous comment is that it is not that easy to change and fabricate numbers without being caught. THe totals should match up with the number of voters that came in to vote. I am presuming that that record is kept seperately. If the totals do not match up, then the vote counts are suspect as I believe happened in Sutton

I'm not sure if I grasp why there shouldn't be a recount in NH. I got an email, which seems to have been repeated here several times, that we can't be sure of who possessed the ballots, who printed the ballots, etc.

True. Perhaps someone printed an entire duplicate set of paper ballots and have swapped the phony ones for the real ones. But that's really damned unlikely.

And the longer we wait the more monkey business there will be.

I will entertain any theory as to how an election may have been stolen or how the evildoers may try to cover it up.

However, I find the argument that you don't do a recount because they might fake the recount is a rather sad argument. It's sort of surrender because you might lose. And as far as looking bad, people presume you are nuts if you question these machines. Am I worried about being called a nut at this late stage?

There is no logical reason for Clinton and her people to risk her integrity to steal so few delegates.

However, it makes perfect sense to steal delegates for her in order to sink her later. If there was a fraud here, even if Clinton had nothing to do with it, this will be a time bomb ready to go off when the perps want it to.

W00t W00t W00t!!!!!!!!!!!
FYI I just went over to Dennis's web site and made a contribution. He is now my guy, ska-rew the MSM poleeeticians.

I do agree with Brad:
"We would also caution Kucinich and his team to closely inspect the chain of custody for the ballots in question, and what has happened to them, and the vulnerable op-scan memory cards, since the election two days ago, during the period that concern has been widely expressed about the seemingly anomalous results of Tuesday's election. It's important that the chain of custody be both secure, fully logged, and transparent."

In computer forensics, the chain of custody is everything. We have to know how the chain of custody was maintained from the point throughout the cycle.

You can bet your patootie that the MSM won't be saying a word about this nor slags lit Ed whatsit on Air America, nor that jerk Bennett on Sirius, who this morning was having a spirited discussion on how many times he changes his underwear - (with call ins)........ as Stephie Miller would say on her show - I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.

Dredd, funny you should say that about a background task.
ever since last July when we were having our little discussion about Southworth et al, I have had the same thing happen.
It doesn't show up on the task manager, or the running programs, but when I go to shut down sometimes it hangs and I get a glimpse of it...I'll get the name of it next time.

(I've posted here before under another alias, but will use a pseudonym here for reasons that will become obvious.){Still, you will want to have picked out a screen name and stuck to it. Those are the rules. --99}

I hate to bring this up, but something doesn't smell quite right here.

Assuming that this voting was actually gamed, why would they be so blatently obvious? These people are experts - they know that they only need to fix it by one vote more than the competitor to win the election, and they've done it many times before. Further, in this case, for all intents and purposes, the outcome is irrelevent - by the time the recount is done, many other states will have had their primaries and what the recount reveals will change nothing.

The wide margin between the polls and votes suggests to me one of two possible scenarios - either the polling was gamed somehow (up until very recently, polling nearly matched the outcome), or they were rigged specifically to draw massive attention from the election advocates (and possibly away from something else?*).

My prediction for the outcome of the recount - there will be some anomalies, but most of those can be explained by mistakes made by humans (such as transposing numbers or miscalibration of the card readers); the machines will have worked "flawlessly". Regardless, the errors found would not have changed the outcome of the voting. Additionally, some of the swing could easily be explained by the large number of "improper or illegal" voters - we've already seen suggestions (real or not) of precincts running our of votes (meaning obviously that more people voted than should have), and non-residents voting (a report on this forum noted a large number of out-of-state license plates in a precinct parking lot, and in the same post a comment noting the lack of ID checking).

Therefore, the obvious conclusions of this whole mess would be the following: Polling cannot be trusted since it was so wrong compared to the actual voting that the recount proved to be accurate; Since there were so many human related errors in the counting process, it would be better to remove them from the process entirely, for instance the calibration errors in the card readers could have been avoided entirely if we had only used touch-screen machines. Additionally, since it appears that many people who should not have voted actually did, we need stronger voter registration and identifcation laws to ensure that only those that should vote actually do so.

Believe me, the scenario I outlined above is not my desire, but one possible explanation of the evidence that I've seen so far. I hope I'm wrong. If you have an alternate explaination that fits all the facts, please share it.

(*Note that the polls started changing only a short while ago - about the time the Times would have started fact-checking the Edmonds story {and tipping off those involved that publication was imminent}. It's also an interesting coincidence how the Edmonds story started gaining momentum on the day of the primary, and then quickly died.)

I stated in #106 that I do not have a clue what happened. What I meant to imply Is I don’t have proof that they were swapped.

I do have a very good clue that some action was taken by the machines that resulted in Clinton getting credit for votes one would expect to go to Obama and Obama getting votes expected to go to Clinton.

Here is why I can say that:

It is a very long shot that any contestant’s machine count will match the percent of the hand count of any contestant that has a different percentage of the hand count. The more the hand counts differ the more unlikely it is that such a thing will happen. Having it happened once in any race is a long shot. Having it independently happen to two contestants in the same race is a much longer shot.

With the hand counts acting as good but far from perfect predictors for the machine “count” the likelihood of any contestants machine “count” matching their own hand count should not be a long shot at all. It should in fact be somewhat expected.

If a vote swapping action by the machines caused Obama percentage to match Clintons hand counted percentage it automatically forced Clinton’s machine count to the percentage that Obama got in the hand count. If there was no swap then these two long shots had to happen independently. Without a swap any other contestant could have recovered Obamas lost votes. Every single one of those lost Obama votes would not have had to go to Clinton.

So what are we to believe?

1. That their votes were swapped .

2a. That two contestants hit on very long shots in the same contest:
2b. The two contestants who hit on those very long shots (2a) just by fluke chance happened two be the two contestants who did not perform according to pre-election expectations

ALL of the Smart Money is clearly on option number one.

So I can’t really say I don’t have a clue. I know where to put my money.

The possibility of voter fraud in NH is not obvious to most people. And it's not being covered in the mainstream media at all.

If this were some kind of setup to once and for all destroy the idea of election fraud in the American public this early in the primary season so that frauds may be perpetrated later then you would expect a lot more reporting to call attention to it in order to slap it down.

If a narrative were being created the mainstream media would be right on top of this.

Matching your own hand count with your correct machine count is much easier than maching to that someone else. Any one match as exact as these is a long shot. If one of these happend as the result of a swap program the other would automatically happen too. Without a swap type program acting on the results you have to have two independent long shots happening to these two people. And you also have to be foolish enough to believe that these flukes just happened to happen to two people who by fluke chance just happened to match each others percentage rather than that of any other of the contestants.

In short you have do defy all the laws of probibality to believe that this was an honestly counted election!

There's a letter written by someone named Nancy Tobi at http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/30018, urging progressives NOT to do a recount. It's a very weird letter, and I thought I'd pass it on to see what you folks here think about it.

W A R N I N G: Since Obama and Clinton had their numbers exactly SWAPPED by the optical scanners SOMEONE INVOLVED with the original fraud is going to insert themselves into the recount process and insist that the ballot order for Obama and Clinton are SWAPPED as well This way the recounts will be TOTALLY CONSISTENT and "PROVE" Hillary WON. This is a DISASTER and Kucinich is walking into a trap.

We NEED MASSIVE EYES ON THIS RECOUNT PROCESS AND WE NEED TO KNOW THE ORIGINAL BALLOT ORDER. Much was made of the fact that Clinton was at the TOP of the ballot and Obama was at the BOTTOM. Was this true or was this part of the plan to RIG ANY RECOUNT? WE NEED SWORN STATEMENTS FROM NEW HAMPSHIRE VOTERS AND POLL WORKERS AS TO THE ORDER IN WHICH OBAMA AND CLINTON APPEARED ON THE BALLOT ON ELECTION DAY OTHERWISE THIS RECOUNT IS WORSE THAN USELESS.

WE ALSO NEED TO MAKE SURE RECOUNT WORKERS ARE NOT MISLEAD ABOUT WHICH END OF THE BALLOT IS READ BY THE MACHINE. IF RECOUNT WORKERS ARE TOLD THAT THE MARK AT THE BOTTOM IS THE CLINTON VOTE AND THE MARK AT THE TOP IS THE OBAMA VOTE AGAIN THEY WILL HAVE SUCCESSFULLY STOLEN IT. SEE HOW CLEVER THIS FRAUD WAS? BALLOT POSITION SWAPPING IS THE MOST EFFECTIVE ELECTION FRAUD - NOT FRAUDULENTLY CHANGING THE VOTE TOTALS.

Analysts at the Election Defense Alliance (EDA) have confirmed that based on the official results on the New Hampshire Secretary of state web site, there is a remarkable relationship between Obama and Clinton votes, when you look at votes tabulated by op-scan v. votes tabulated by hand:

Clinton Optical scan 91,717 52.95%
Obama Optical scan 81,495 47.05%

Clinton Hand-counted 20,889 47.05%
Obama Hand-counted 23,509 52.95%

The percentages appear to be swapped. That seems highly unusual, to say the least.

I just ran the numbers, using the town by town data from the NH Secretary of State (who has a typo in his county totals incidentally, but only one vote down for Richardson in Grafton, and one vote up for Richardson in Strafford, so they even out) and the hand count vs. machine count descriptions from the ronrox page (who has wrong overall totals, too).
The total percentages aren't reflected in the numbers above. Clinton actually got 40.63% of the vote in optical scan towns, and 34.88% of the vote in hand count towns. Obama actually got 36.13% in optical scan and 39.22% in hand count towns.
The only way to get the percentages above are if you compare Clinton/(Clinton+Obama) votes, not Clinton/(entire field) of votes. This is just a coincidence, and isn't really reflected in the data.

Additionally, for the hypothesis that machine counted towns flipped votes towards Clinton from Obama, if you look through the data, most of the smaller towns (Lebanon and Keene) went for Obama while the larger ones went for Clinton (Manchester and Nashua). Even within large cities, some wards went to Obama and some to Clinton - Concord was split down the middle this way, but edged slightly Clinton.

Not saying this was a perfectly above board election, but from the actual data published by the secretary of state, it doesn't look like the above vote-flipping hypothesis is supported by fact.

If anyone is interested, I have the complete data as an excel spreadsheet. Feel free to email me at my name above at gmail.

The exact switched optical/hand % totals are like a dare to recount. If so, one theory is that it is a trap to hinder future recounts etc. Is it possible that fraud(that looks blatant to me) was committed to encourage a recount to show that results can indeed be changed?

Now, it is a coincidence that they come out flipped, but it's just coincidence, like Bill Gates' name in ASCII adding up to 666. No one actually calculates the numbers that way, and a "the machines counted all Obama votes for Clinton and vice versa" hypothesis isn't supported by those percentages, because then the overall totals would have been flipped... but they aren't.

Additionally, it varies by towns, and even varies by wards in large cities. Unfortunately, this is just pure coincidence.

Again - data is available in an excel sheet for anyone who wants it at my name @ gmail.

Nancy's valid concerns are now discussed both in Brad's article and in the comments, but here's a quick reply:

New Hampshire has NO secure chain of custody for its paper ballots... and if there is a discrepancy and if it's not a malfunction then the perps would know that and will have prepared apprpriate countermeasures.

Voila! All numbers match!

And the same Republican-primed noise machine that screams "CONSPIRACY THEORIST!!!" at anyone daring to ask that ballots actually be counted... that noise machine will still be screaming "TOLD YOU SO" as our new president marches our troops into Tehran.

I'm finally to the point where I've given up on my 'Ozzie and Harriet' view of life in the U.S. ... Bush/Cheney have won. They have defeated democracy by kicking it in the teeth, and they've done it with 99% of the sheep in this country (which does not include those on this board) totally unaware of it. Now that I've given up trying to fix the problem, because it is way beyond that point, the question that faces me is this: what to do with this knowledge? Move out of the country? Accept the facts and watch the country disintigrate before my eyes? Or do I have other choices? Someone chime in, please ...

Although the number of smaller machine counted towns Obama wins is closer to Clinton's, he still loses in all categories and he wins only 50% or less of the three largest size towns.

In the city of Manchester, Obama lost around 3100 votes to Clinton.

I broke down the data so it would be layman friendly. I made a column of the cities counted by hand and another for the cities counted by machine, and entered them alphabetically using only Obama and Clinton, with the winner on top for easy scanning. The list is extremely easy to read. If anyone, including you, Brad, wants this list, let me know on bradblog.

Example:

DIEBOLD ACCUVOTE OPTICAL SCAN

Allenstown- 990 votes
Clinton= 461votes, 46.57%

Obama =256 votes, 25.86%

This site left justifies, so the town name can't
indented like it is on my list.

Please weigh in. Many of you are experts in this area, I'm not. Corrections welcome.

You're analysis is not quite right. You point out how vote percentages are normally counted (with the denominator as the total votes, rather than 2 candidates added together). The point I'd like to make is that it does not make a difference to the case that Brad et al are making. If the calculations above had included votes from the other candidates, it simply would have reduced the Clinton and Obama numbers, but the Clinton and Obama numbers would still be flipped.

So, just because the calculation shown does not include votes from the other candidates, it does not change a thing.

You say it's just a coincidence. How do you KNOW? You don't. Those numbers by themselves don't prove anything, but they are suspicious, and 100% consistent with a tabulation error where the Clinton votes are swapped with Obama votes. Which I bet is one of the easiest hacks to do.

I say, at least start doing a hand recount somewhere. The vote flipping hypothesis should be easy to test, if the raw pre- and exit-polling data were available. There must be Clinton and Obama strongholds within NH. The flipping discrepancy would be most apparent in the strongholds. E.g. an are that is 65/35 in favor of Obama suddenly votes 65/35 for Hillary.

I disagree w/ the Nanci Tobi letter in that a recount, taking into consideration the mucked up paper trail, will at least produce public attention that even lefty talk-show hosts refuse to talk about. The only shows I see mentioning this are Stephanie Miller, Tom Hartmann, Jon Elliott, Mike Malloy and other more obscure hosts. Thank God for them! The Ed Shultz's and Randi Rhodes on prime time won't even mention it. If this keeps up,..voting will be for suckers!

A glaring hypocracy to point out with the AfterDowningStreet post urging to NOT try to hand count the ballots. I didn't read all 150+ posts here, so apologies if this is repeated, but this should be highlighted, and I think incorporated into Brad's main article.

First, he/she says how it was very tough to get a recount in 2004 in NH:

"...and we have learned the pain from the 2004 Nader recount, in which only 11 districts were counted, chosen by a highly questionable person, and then nothing showed up."

And then he/she says the opposite:

"...don't you think the riggers would have a backup Plan B rigged recount, knowing how easy it is to get a recount in NH?"

Well Chris Matthews asks repeatedly about the disparity between the exit polls and the results. I think that this is a very good time to donate to Kucinich. I donated this morning even though Edwards is my man. I am just sick that we have to have this conversation and that so many of us feel that our votes do not count.

There is no reason whatsoever not to do this recount. Even if it does turn out to be just an insane coincidence (people do win the lottery, I've been told =P ), the numbers are suspect and contradict the exit polls, which is all the justification necessary in my mind to do it.

I applaud Dennis, but the question still remains. Who would do the recount, would there be independent observers of the recount process? Would it be transparent and above question or reproach?
Could this be used to make Kucinich look bad or ridiculous, if the process was corrupted, could they corrupt the results of a recount in order to hold it up and say "see! it worked just fine! No worries".. Then what happens if the results are skewed in other primaries.. The candidates may be less likely to challenge it if the results of questioning the voting are ridicule or bad press..
That would also put the process in jeopardy.

I want transparency, all the votes to be counted correctly (or just to be counted), and the process to be secure. The process is too vulnerable to corruption and altering results with these machines and privatizing the process. It needs to be changed. It should have been changed before we got to this point with all that has been studied and printed about the last two elections.

Kucinich is right to question but needs to proceed carefully. I care most about the integrity of the voting process and preserving our democracy.

Dennis has my vote when this thing gets to California! I wish I had the money to help with the recount effort. Please, those who do, make this a priority, because it could break open the whole rotten Diebold vote stealing scam now and in '04. Coulter may have stolen one vote, but these guys stole millions! I just finished a new project (a CD) which might make some unexpected money. If this happens, Dennis gets some. But he needs it now! This is important!

Watch! This is fodder to make Kucinich look the tin foil hat fool again,....lefty talk show host Ed Shultz just said Kucinich is "squawking" over a vote recount. Atta way to support our main Constitutional advocate big red!

Sounds like South Carolina exclusively uses those idiotic touch-screen machines by Ivotronic, you know, the ones with a history of fouling up counts before? The ones shown before to be grossly unreliable?

Anyone with SC ties, please campaign to have these machines thrown into the dumpster and replaced with hand-counted ballots-- preferably counted twice with different hands. We cannot have another disputed primary.

You're analysis is not quite right. You point out how vote percentages are normally counted (with the denominator as the total votes, rather than 2 candidates added together). The point I'd like to make is that it does not make a difference to the case that Brad et al are making. If the calculations above had included votes from the other candidates, it simply would have reduced the Clinton and Obama numbers, but the Clinton and Obama numbers would still be flipped.

Not so...
If you include the totals, you get the following (with numbers shown for calculation purposes):
Total votes for Clinton - 112,606
hand votes for Clinton - 20,706
machine votes for Clinton - 91,900

See? No flip.
This is not evidence of no fraud - this is just evidence that the "flip" theory is unsupported.

You say it's just a coincidence. How do you KNOW? You don't. Those numbers by themselves don't prove anything, but they are suspicious, and 100% consistent with a tabulation error where the Clinton votes are swapped with Obama votes. Which I bet is one of the easiest hacks to do.

They aren't consistent with a tabulation error is the problem, because the tabulation is done by votes, not by percentage, and not by comparison between the two candidates but between the whole field.

Again, I have this data as an excel sheet, if you want. You can play with the sums and percentages yourself to see how they stack up.

Exit Polls have been Released revealing a disparity between results and vote count. Recount is on its way Dennis has officially filed it.

Obama 39%
Clinton 34%
Edwards 18%

NEVER FORGET THAT ROVE SEEKS TO DISCREDIT EXIT POLLS!!!!!! Exit polls have served as a check on elections for decades. Only until Bush and Rove appeared on the scene have they been challenged, dissed, questioned, erroneous, wrong, or presented as inaccurate.

Go Dennis Go! If Richardson and Gore back Edwards we are in the hunt!!! Call Richardson today and ask him to back Edwards!!!!.

Obama is a corporate shill, and NOT an agent of change. Witness his support of a coal gassification plant in his district against and contrary to the massive opposition by his constituents. Obama has avoided votes and did not stand up to the vote shenaniagans in NH. Pretty much an indicator that no matter what the polls say in Novemebr if he's the man, he will not fight for the vote. No wonder Kerry endorsed him, Mr Concession is on board!

Kucinich should have backed Edwards like he did in 2004. The shine will fade on Obama and we know Clinton is all veneer. Problem is, most people like pretty things, not reality. The recount for NH is way cheap,....still not sure how to donate to that cause,..any help?

Elliot,
Does the phrase, "Fools rush in" mean anything? Rushing into battle without knowing who your enemies are is foolish, not patriotic.

If the chain of custody is compromised, as Nancy Tobi points out, further hands into that pot of corruption does not help clear things up. We need some answers before we start to recount.

Potentially, the allowance of knowingly fraudulent equipment into the voting/tabulating process could render the primary illegal. Now, just think of what a recount of an illegal election process spells out. Now, which vote do you count? The one's in an illegal election or the one's in a legal election?

thank you dennis k for trying to open the black boxes of new hampshire
shame on those of u that don't support a recount.after all the constitution guarentees us a "mean count" which i think means, "accurate count"
if the chain of custody isnt secure,then document that and bring charges against those clerks
if i had a choice its manchester that would be "recounted",their r 12 wards that heavily voted clinton,romney,all counted by machine
manchester is whr the apollo theater is,u know the theater whr obama packed them inside and outside,whr peops lined up for blocks
today is the last day to ask for a recount and the sec of state still doesnt have its numbers complete...that alone demands a recount because we the people r not getting a "mean" count if data is missing and /or incomplete

max,
I gotta think Kucinich will tread wisely,...to be timid and spineless w/ the "lets wait" attitude is the Dems downfall,....publicity is what we lack, and waiting sure as hell won't help that! I'm ready to donate, just want to make sure where....

What too many seem to fail to realize is that New Hampshire is too inconsequential to be the smoking gun that convicts voting machines. There is far too much money at stake - more than activists could ever raise - for them to allow this to kill them. Even assuming that the voting machine vendors were so incompetent that they would make a mistake on this scale, they would do everything possible to make sure that proving the error is impossible. They (allegedly) did it in Florida, they (allegedly) did it in Ohio, this is simple in comparison.

In all reality, a recount, while having a very slim chance of success, has an almost unmeasurable potential to damage or destroy every bit of progress the election rights advocates have fought for over the past 8 years. As I said in my previous post, I hope I'm wrong.

I emailed Democracy Now yesterday asking for Brad to be on their show.The Time magazine writer , who did the recent article on election fraud,was on and said,"No scientists have proven election machines have been hacked." Sometimes Amy has right and left guests on. I consider Brad to be an expert for progressives. Time ,well ,status quo. News to them defies logic...this has been going on for decades and recently gotten worse.

Well - here we are right back where we started. The only election system that doesn't need to be as concerned with issues such as "paper chain of custody" and software "hackability" that can change votes on a large scale is ...

Mechanical Lever Machines.

That's right, the same system that came into use a century ago expressly to address the rampant fraud in paper ballot elections.

Now a federal court is about to order the last state still using this time-tested, safe, secure and largely unassailable system to be scrapped in favor of faulty alternatives. (I'm referring here to NY - which did not have any hanging chads or other systems that called any results into question - beyond the occassional individual machine malfunction in a single voting district here or there, or the processing of paper ballots cast by absentee and affidavit voters)

And what have voter integrity groups been spending their time on over the past few years? Have they been defending the honorable metal beasts that have produced the fairest elections of them all? NO - they've fallen into the trap of "modernization" with a system (Op-Scan) they feel is better than the worst of the alternatives (touch screens) - fully ignorant of the massive problems that a brief reading of history reveals in paper balloting even without the use electronic, computer-aided scanners.

If the election integrity movement is to be true to its proclaimed goals - fair elections - then they should rally around saving the venerable Mechanical Lever Machines. While it's true that these anachronistic clunkers don't provide the ability for unassisted voting by the disabled, is the alternative better - equipment they can vote on alone but can't trust that their votes will be counted correctly? The vendors of new equipment (and those with less profit-driven and more power-hungry motives) are not dumb --- they know that tying voting system modernization to the accessibility "fairness" issue would muddle the voter integrity field with something that would make it almost impossible to continue using the trustworthy systems of yore.

As Justice Anthony Kennedy asked on Wednesday during the arguments in the Indiana Voter ID case: "You want us to invalidate a statute on the ground that it's a minor inconvenience to a small percentage of voters?" While the question there really depends on the definition of "minor inconvenience" and whether it really is only "a small percentage of voters" impacted by voter ID requirements (not to mention whether such voters tend to vote cohesively for a particular party), the same question may be more pertinent to the issue of what voting system to use:

You want us to invalidate an entire voting system on the ground that it's a minor inconvenience to a small percentage of voters?

It should be clear that we need, at least for now, to go back to voting with the good-ole Mechanical Lever Machines until we can rethink this entire issue in a more sane, less time pressured way.

Bev: Kudos on all the work you’ve done on this issue. Now I’m wondering if you could please call Kucinich and let him know your concerns. Obviously he is a smart man who understands the gravity of this issue. If he’s not aware of what you’ve told us, then I’m sure he’d like to know. I bet the last thing he wants to do is be used to validate inaccurate results.

Kudos to GoodGovtGuy. I wish I had thought of that!
Those clunkers were big, cumbersome, and I remember that they had to be stored in our high school, but by god when you flipped that lever, you knew it had been flipped, and the counter incremented, and that was that. Their use would indeed give us time to re-think this entire mess. If we don't have accountability and integrity, then the entire process is null and void. In security, you must guarantee 4 things: Confidentiality, Availability, Integrity, and Accountability. The only one we have left, is Availability - unless of course you have been "caged" as described by Greg Pallast. I have never met a computer that I would trust.

This is why I say the best way to fix this is one simple system, nationwide, for all elections. A ballot that is optically scanned and then, after that is ALWAYS hand counted, in a public and an auditable fairly bi-partisan/non-partisan way. It gives an immediate 'early' count, and only after the hand count matches it, an 'official' count. This virtually eliminates the need for recounts except in the most extreme cases. Oh, and only public election financing, no elecoral college and banning of all lobbyists. Period.

Once out of the way, we can get a handle on the greatest of challenges. A new monetary system no longer based on borrowing our currency with interest from the globalist bankers that incite then fully fund both sides of every war, caused the great depression and every other financial 'correction' and hired every assasin that killed a US president, and even Julius Caeser, all of whom were against their controlling currency, as they do now. America has a lot of work to do, this is just the start of it.

Where’s Howard Dean during all of this? Why doesn’t he get out there and insist on a fair recount? He should have his finger on the pulse of the chain of command for those ballots. If he’s doing his job, shouldn’t he know where the ballots are right now and who’s keeping an eye on them? Isn’t he supposed to be looking out for this party? I say we start bombarding Dean with email.

for comment 133: sorry, but the tune that keeps popping up in my head is a bit more frightening:

{Ed Note: and we will be in the dark about that tune until you paste the url in. If you can't work the link button thing, you can just paste the url in the comment and the software turns it into a link.... --99}

I ask of those opposed to the recount process a simple question: When?
When do you seek to bring transparancy to the election counting process?
When do you expect to have a "smoking gun?"
Are 60,000 caged voter list of whom 98% are african-american are enough?
Are convictions in court striking to the very heart of a voting systems legitimacy enough?
If election fraud is a rampent and as easily perpetrate as the evidence suggests, failing to expose it amounts to compicity in its execution.

Sucess in uncoverning specific instances of fraud is not the purpose behind Mr Kucinich's request.

Transparency is - transparancy in the chain of custody, exposing methods that potential "cover-up" artists will imploy is...exposing the "spin" plan is. The open government principle at its core abhores secracy, embrasses transparency.

Putting those who further the agenda of "back-room" policitics on notice that their actions will be challenged when there atleast appears to be questions on the veracity of the result will futher the goals of promoting honest election more than any post-hoc action has since 2000.

A failure to defend the scientifically accurate exit polling method at a time when those who are supposely the orchestraters of the fraudlent system are directly challenging is playing into THEIR trap. Once again, they are using fear to restrain your actions and thoughts. Fear to make you question whether where the statutory rights granting a recount should be exercised. Fear to make you "pass" on an opportunity to bring the system into the open. And most of all, fear to challenge the new "meme" of anti-scientific propaganda.

Transparency advocates will always "loose" when the battles are fought after the war has ended.
The signficant work at exposing flaws and problems with the election counting process has provided the ammution for those warriors who seek to advance the cause of liberty. Using that information, they are now proceeding to challenge a potentially corrupt system.

The system will not reform itself from within should be evident to all. Previous methods of reform, including: criminal penalties, civil action or media exposure did not work. For what ever of the various reasons well-know to observers of this movement, old methods have failed to put any damper on the enthusism of the proponants of the flawed system. New methods need to be adopted. Methods which strike to the heart of the problem - transparency.

If one beleives that there is still some truth in the addage: "Its not whether you win or lose, it is how you play the game", then appauled efforts that concenrate on "how the game is played".

Why would the Republicans risk doing this in a state where the ballots could be counted? Of course, they know it could be put off as an innocent 'machine programming error', as the above co-incidence in data could indicate. The other consideration is that, if fraud were proven, the blame would likely be pushed on to the Democrats from their noise machine. After all, it would have been a Democrat who benefitted from the fraud. Why would we care, they would say.

Saw this in the Wall Street Journal this morning, in an editorial commenting on which candidate the Republicans would prefer facing in the November election. Might be a factor in intervening at this early date, when a ground-swell of support seemed to be building for Obama. Clearly, Obama represents the biggest real threat to the Republican agenda, and to their power base in Washington.

Jim

-------------------------------------------

(Excerpt from editorial, The Wall Street Journal, Jan 11, 2008)

THE OBAMA DOWNSIDE:

He's an unknown, a change, a mental shift, for Republicans, who'd been gearing up for Mrs. Clinton. He's skillfully tapped into a bitterness with the status quo, and his optimistic message of hope is tough to counter (Just ask the tearful Mrs. Clinton). Is Obama-mania at its start, or its peak? The great fear of Republicans is that it's the former.

Mrs. Clinton has a ceiling on her support. No matter how great a race she runs, any victory will be unlikely to result in significant Washington realignment. But Mr. Obama? If he really has tapped into something deep in the American soul, and if he can keep tapping until Novenber, it's conceivable he could bring with him a new wash of Democratic seats that could reshape the Washington political landscape for years to come. That's the big gamble.

This is not about Candidate A winning or Candidate B losing. This is solely about the hackable, unsecure voting machines (optical scan in NH) that have been investigated and proven to be crap and yet are still deployed to count the majority of elections in this country.

Whenever and wherever there is a discrepancy with electronic voting machines involved --- no matter how big or small the race, no matter if it's Repub or Dem --- Voting Integrity advocates look into it. It's what they do.

Please do not assume or assign motives, intentions, or conclusions to anyone here that are not EXPLICITLY stated. Brad makes crystal clear that he doesn't care who won or lost, just that the results are ACCURATE. Period.

The site owner is not responsible for the opinions of commenters in this open forum. No endorsement of commenters' opinions is either intended or implied.

In addition, please note that The Brad Blog does not allege that fraud or ("rigging") has actually occurred --- only that the results of any contest that incorporates electronic voting systems must be subject to exacting scrutiny and independent verification prior to certification.

Jim Oberg, I've been saying this for a few days. It would make no sense for Hillary to risk her integrity for a couple of delegates at most, which pretty much is what an election fraud in New Hampshire would have/has given her.

But that doesn't mean the Republicans wouldn't want to risk her integrity.

(apparently I was doing the same calculation as Lois G in #203 above, but I did more, please read!)

The swapped percentages can be carried out to almost 6 (six) significant figures! Rather than the 4 significant figures in Brad's article!

Clinton Optical Scan:
52.9507%

Barack Hand Count:
52.9506%

Clinton Hand Count:
47.0494%

Barack Optical Scan:
47.0493%

OMFG! My heart is racing because I just found ANOTHER strangeness in the numbers! THIS GETS EVEN WIERDER, PLEASE CHECK THIS OUT!

Take the calculation out to 8 sig figs, and look at the difference between the Obama Op Scan and Clinton Hand Count. That miniscule difference is 0.00014%. Now take the Clinton Hand Count and add 1 vote to it, just to see how much it changes things. Now the difference between the Obama Op Scan and Clinton Hand Count is 0.002388%. That is a small number, but it is actually 17 times larger than the 0.00014%.

What that means is that the vote totals are swapped PERFECTLY. Even adding one single vote, and it starts to deviate from perfection! I don't know if that means anything, but it sure is WIERD!!

And the same holds true for adding or subtracting 1 vote to ANY of the 4 vote totals. Any perturbation of just one vote and it deveates from perfection. Out of all these 217,610 votes cast for Barack and Clinton on the two voting methods, they could not possibly be more perfectly swapped, not even by one vote.

Does anyone have a link to the Sec. of State for N.H. web site. I need to recheck the numbers. No information has beeen provided by EDA for Edwards and Richardson. What about their vote totals? The total for all candidates should equal 100%, not just for two candidates. Why do the percentages for Clinton and Obama equal 100%? This doesn't make sense to me.

Are you guys sure there's anything to this? Are you sure there's any there there? Or could this be a misinterpretation of the data?

I'll hopefully provide a simple answer to your question. I (and the EDA) were focusing in on just the votes for Obama and Clinton. Sure, the other candidates got votes too. But whatever the other candidates got, that doesn't change the relationship between the votes for Obama and Clinton. If the votes for Edwards, Richardson, Kucinich, etc, were included, the percentages for Obama and Clinton would be less than what I (and the EDA) showed, but the percentages for Obama and Clinton would still be perfectly flipped.

Optical-scan voting machines results represent 81% of the vote total versus 19% for hand counted ballots. Hand-counted ballots were used in rural, less populated regions of the state of N.H. where Obama was expected to do less well. Therefore, the op-scan results are suspicious at face value knowing what we do about Diebold irregularities of the past.

I say a recount is in order, necessary and justified based on these preliminary numbers. But the idea that vote totals were merely flipped is a fallacy. How could the Diebold machines have known the results of hand-counted ballots, anyway? They couldn't. It's not as simple as that. Let that be a lesson to conspiracy theorists. Get your facts straight first. Otherwise you can't complain when the mainstream-media ignore you.

Sorry, Bejammin075, I posted before reading your latest. Maybe I was a bit harsh, and I'm new to this story, but why does David Lindorff of Counterpunch show different, non-flipped percentages for the Op-Scan versus Hand Count numbers.

Flipping vote percentage totals would be an idiotic way to try and steal an election. It would scream fraud from the rooftops. Not a very sophisticated way to try and shave an election, and it could only be done during a final count. So whose numbers are right, yours or David Lindorff's. They can't both be right since his percentages aren't flipped.

I'm not being confrontational. I'm just trying to get to the bottom of this.

The way they can back up the numbers is replacing the ballots with "fake ones", if these ballots are going to be recounted what is to say that they can't be swapped out? I am sure there are stacks of extra ballots left over, I don't know, I am always dissapointed First it was recount florida, then Ohio, New Hampshire was already recounted in 2004 with Nader, I don't want to get excited again............to be let down again..................

Lindorff's numbers DO flip. The numbers from Lindorff's article are still consistent with the (very speculative) vote-swapping hypothesis.

39.6 / 36.3 = 1.091

38.6 / 34.9 = 1.106

The two ratios are not quite identical, but I don't know how Lindorff rounded his numbers, which affects those ratios. Also, even if the two groups (voters in hand-counted precincts, vs. the rest) both voted for Obama over Clinton to roughly the same degree, they wouldn't have identical Obama/Clinton ratios, since the 2 groups are independent of each other.

I'd point out that there are examples of other elections where two columns in the tabulating software were swapped, and then an examination of the ballots revealed the error.

So I am speculating that IF (big "IF") the votes were swapped, it could have been a simple accident. It wouldn't be the first time. In this scenario, the state of NH was divided into 2 groups (19% and 81%) that voted overall the same proportion for Obama and Clinton, where the 81% group had 2 candidates swap votes, like has been verified in other past elections. I don't think THAT is a conspiracy theory, since in that case there are zero malicious individuals. Also, the vote totals don't need to suddenly flip at the very end, if the mistake was programmed uniformly into the software before any voting took place.

Ask yourself one question, if the votes were swapped, what should the "real" results look like? According to this theory, to correct the results, the ratio between Obama/Clinton votes should match almost exactly between hand counted and machine counted regions.

Why should the ratios match when the demographics of the two regions are different? This is just a coincidence.

1) the GOP has already invested billions trashing the clintons, most of it on talk radio
2) trashing obama is not as easy. it's easier for them to hide their misogyny than their racism. the racist blowhards will be biting their tongues to bloody stumps before november next year or all they will have voting for them is a small minority. while many will argue americans are largely racist, only the really serious racists will be able to stay with them
3) obama has a natural confidence that looks like the "royal (irrational) certitude" quality that the right loves in it's candidates.

Trank, you put your finger on it. Trashing the Clintons on talk radio, keeping the Clinton hatred alive, is a great base motivator. What other reason would Republicans even have to vote in 2008? That's why they want Hillary: they can beat her. She's the only one of the three frontrunners who loses in matchups with Republicans. She will bring out their base like no one else. And, as an extra added bonus, should she by some fluke of the hacked voting machines, actually win, well they'll end up with a corporate friendly candidate who takes PAC money gladly and has compromise as her defining characteristic. That means she can be controlled. She's ideal. Republicans will win if she loses and win if she wins. I think in some other world her ability to compromise would be just the right thing, but it's not in this one: To paraphrase the I Ching : There should be no compromise with evil.

Take your country back from the corporate fascist robber barons. Burn a CD and share with family and friends. The CMSM will only drip-drip-drip this info out to the public. The info faucet has to be turned on full blast.

I think that this recount, 60,000 votes that it is, can be done throughouly well before other states elections. I'm especially worried about Feb 5.

We must make sure this happens! Please, if you agree with what I am saying, spread the word and send a email right now to William Gardner at Elections@sos.state.nh.us

You can also call at 603-271-3242, but email has the advantage that you can do it right now and not wait until the office opens Monday.

Please copy this note and put it on any blogs or sites that you think it belongs at. Clearly, the money and labor needed can easily be rallied - let's do out part to make it happen. There can be no excuse for this to take so long that the recount is done too late. Even if the recount says the numbers are accurate, it's important to know that ASAP also.

Again, if you feel this is important please do something about it, and do it right away! It won't cost you a dollar, so if you are waiting around killing time online right now, instead do this bit of legwork. You'll be glad you did.

If you believe that professional pollsters only mess up when trillions of dollars are on the line for the establishment then you are fooling yourself. Statistics can be used in court. At the very least as a basis for reason rather than making up effects that only exist based on convenience. If the paper ballots don't match the optical scans then we are finally getting to the real soar spot in our delicate democracy. If we wait too long they will ignore us.

2. Insensitive MLK Comment

During an election period candidates should be more careful in wording speech. The FULL CLIP of the comments she made are disturbing at the very least if you are expecting votes. And what kind of votes is she asking for? Not a pretty thought. I truly believe her comment shows professional INCOMPETENCE.

3. Voter Suppression

Suppression of votes by changing the DNC rules as they go would destroy the system all together. Is this what the courts in Nevada are really trying to do?

Conclusion

You would have to be blind at this point to ignore the patterns of the old system. No matter what. Vote your conscience. These guys think their secret wisedom is more powerful and efficient to our country than BIODIVERSITY. I think not!

I won't say who I voted for but I think they shouldn't have to recount because Kucinich was too far behind on the votes he may get alittle more votes but not enough to get in the race to win.I could see if he was close but he wasn't.